The young girl, without casting a glance either at Roderick or at Rowland, looked about for a chair, and, on perceiving one, sank into it listlessly, pulled her poodle towards her, and began to rearrange his top-knot.Rowland saw that, even with her eyes dropped, her beauty was still dazzling.
"I trust we are at liberty to enter," said the elder lady, with majesty.
"We were told that Mr.Hudson had no fixed day, and that we might come at any time.Let us not disturb you."Roderick, as one of the lesser lights of the Roman art-world, had not hitherto been subject to incursions from inquisitive tourists, and, having no regular reception day, was not versed in the usual formulas of welcome.He said nothing, and Rowland, looking at him, saw that he was looking amazedly at the young girl and was apparently unconscious of everything else."By Jove!" he cried precipitately, "it 's that goddess of the Villa Ludovisi!" Rowland in some confusion, did the honors as he could, but the little old gentleman begged him with the most obsequious of smiles to give himself no trouble.
"I have been in many a studio!" he said, with his finger on his nose and a strong Italian accent.
"We are going about everywhere," said his companion.
"I am passionately fond of art!"
Rowland smiled sympathetically, and let them turn to Roderick's statue.
He glanced again at the young sculptor, to invite him to bestir himself, but Roderick was still gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful young mistress of the poodle, who by this time had looked up and was gazing straight at him.There was nothing bold in her look;it expressed a kind of languid, imperturbable indifference.
Her beauty was extraordinary; it grew and grew as the young man observed her.In such a face the maidenly custom of averted eyes and ready blushes would have seemed an anomaly;nature had produced it for man's delight and meant that it should surrender itself freely and coldly to admiration.
It was not immediately apparent, however, that the young lady found an answering entertainment in the physiognomy of her host;she turned her head after a moment and looked idly round the room, and at last let her eyes rest on the statue of the woman seated.
It being left to Rowland to stimulate conversation, he began by complimenting her on the beauty of her dog.
"Yes, he 's very handsome," she murmured."He 's a Florentine.
The dogs in Florence are handsomer than the people."And on Rowland's caressing him: "His name is Stenterello,"she added."Stenterello, give your hand to the gentleman."This order was given in Italian."Say buon giorno a lei."Stenterello thrust out his paw and gave four short, shrill barks;upon which the elder lady turned round and raised her forefinger.
"My dear, my dear, remember where you are! Excuse my foolish child,"she added, turning to Roderick with an agreeable smile.
"She can think of nothing but her poodle.""I am teaching him to talk for me," the young girl went on, without heeding her mother; "to say little things in society.
It will save me a great deal of trouble.Stenterello, love, give a pretty smile and say tanti complimenti!"The poodle wagged his white pate--it looked like one of those little pads in swan's-down, for applying powder to the face--and repeated the barking process.
"He is a wonderful beast," said Rowland.
"He is not a beast," said the young girl."A beast is something black and dirty--something you can't touch.""He is a very valuable dog," the elder lady explained.
"He was presented to my daughter by a Florentine nobleman.""It is not for that I care about him.It is for himself.
He is better than the prince."
"My dear, my dear!" repeated the mother in deprecating accents, but with a significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak his attention to the glory of possessing a daughter who could deal in that fashion with the aristocracy.
Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed before them, a year previous, in the Villa Ludovisi, Roderick and he had exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality.
Roderick had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland now needed no telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a fellow-countrywoman.She was a person of what is called a great deal of presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there, of once brilliant beauty.Her daughter had come lawfully by her loveliness, but Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was silly and that the daughter was not.The mother had a very silly mouth--a mouth, Rowland suspected, capable of expressing an inordinate degree of unreason.The young girl, in spite of her childish satisfaction in her poodle, was not a person of feeble understanding.
Rowland received an impression that, for reasons of her own, she was playing a part.What was the part and what were her reasons?
She was interesting; Rowland wondered what were her domestic secrets.
If her mother was a daughter of the great Republic, it was to be supposed that the young girl was a flower of the American soil;but her beauty had a robustness and tone uncommon in the somewhat facile loveliness of our western maidenhood.She spoke with a vague foreign accent, as if she had spent her life in strange countries.
The little Italian apparently divined Rowland's mute imaginings, for he presently stepped forward, with a bow like a master of ceremonies.
"I have not done my duty," he said, "in not announcing these ladies.
Mrs.Light, Miss Light!"
Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality.
He altered the light, pulled forward two or three figures, and made an apology for not having more to show."I don't pretend to have anything of an exhibition--I am only a novice.""Indeed?--a novice! For a novice this is very well," Mrs.Light declared.
"Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this."The Cavaliere smiled rapturously."It is stupendous!" he murmured.